ONE TIME I WENT TO BURGER KING IN ELKO AND IT WAS THE WORST

Last winter while shivering in our poorly insulated house, my husband and I were like “We should go on a vacation this summer! That’s what married people do, right? Yes? Okay.” It was peachy. It was great. Until seven months later, when we came to the realization that driving to Northern California means driving through Nevada. 

Let me tell you about Nevada.

Nevada is the part of the west that was left over when they drew up all of the other states. None of the states surrounding it wanted any of that barren wasteland within their borders, so after much consideration, they decided to give the gross, triangular shape of land a name because although “the place you have to drive through to get anywhere good…or find gold in California” was definitely accurate, it didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The two lone vaqueros who were brave enough to frequent the space suggested the name “Nada,” which, for all of you uncultured Americans, means “nothing.” The government thought this was a clever idea, but decided to add a couple other letters in there to make it more interesting—and decidedly less multi-cultural. The conversation went something like this:

Government Official 1: So…what letters have we not used yet?

Government Official 2: Um...Z?

1: Z, eh? Nazda….hmm. I don’t know. Something feels wrong about it. I have this feeling that one day this might be too similar to the name of a foreign car company.

2: What are cars?

1: I don’t know.

2: What about a Q? We don’t have a Q yet.

1: Wait—what about South Daquota?

2: Okay. Q is out, then. X?

1: Can’t do X. Sounds too much like Mexico—and aren’t we trying to make this Nada place seem less…exotic? The name needs to be something that will sound weird if someone tries to say it with a Hispanic accent.

2: ……

1: Could we use a V? V is a random letter.

2: What about Vermont?
1: No one even thinks about Vermont.
2: But it’s shaped like a V!

1: OH MY GOODNESS, RODNEY. SO IS THIS PLACE. LOOK. *lifts up map.”

So that’s how it happened. (Look out for this, Wikipedia, because I plan to add this to your page about Nevada.)

But really though—go look at a map and tell me that Nevada isn’t just the space leftover when all the better states were formed. (Or better yet, look at this map, which I conveniently color-coded and and put right here to emphasize my point.) 

BUT SERIOUSLY. JUST LOOK AT THIS.

So back to our trip. 

Nevada made us crazy. There was nothing but dry, pale land in any direction we turned. The lack of scenery drove me to madness—I flailed and bounced and made noises and took out my hair tie. I turned this on. We couldn’t stop talking. Our eyes started to bulge out of our heads. We craved civilization like exiled criminals, stuffed Star Wars fruit snacks in our mouths at light speed, but nothing could satisfy the emptiness Nevada had created within our souls. Did people actually live here? Why is this a place? Are fruit snacks actually food? And then, up in the distance, we saw civilization. Civilization in the form of Elko, which is the name of a town but also the name of my pet elk, if I had an elk.

And we realized we were HUNGRY. In all-capital letters hungry.

Our eyes parched with misuse, we drove off the freeway exit and fell into the gravitational pull of the first restaurant we saw like two flies drawn to a bug-zapper. And somehow we found ourselves standing inside a Burger King, the beady eyes of a freckly Nevadan teenager looking at us look at the menu, the sizzle of fry oil and quiet chatter of two cowboy hats that may or may not have had men underneath them disturbing the silence.  

After we placed our order and participated in excruciating small talk with the greasy teen, we claimed the table in the far left corner of the establishment and awaited the glorious call of “77!” to put an end to our hunger. How they had already had 77 customers that day was intriguing to me. I dwelled on that while my husband went to use the bathroom, while sitting awkwardly in the corner, trying to not draw attention to myself and my lack of cowboy hat. A couple construction workers drifted in. There might have been music playing. A fly crawled on the ledge next to me, trying over and over again to fly through the glass of the window with surprisingly little success. The signs were all there—I should have known what we were getting ourselves into. But we were in Nevada and we were hungry and people do questionable things in times of desperation.

Now, I don’t eat Burger King very often, but I remember it being typical grease-fare in the past. Not amazing, not horrendous. Just cheap, salty, hot food. Which is something you can’t really pack on a road trip (I’m looking at you, Star Wars fruit snacks). I thought I’d be safe with a chicken sandwich, my go-to fast food delicacy, but OH MY GOODNESS WAS I WRONG. THAT FOOD. It was so dry, my tongue turned into sand. The chicken might have been dehydrated. The bun might have been an expired hot dog bun from Elko’s last community barbecue. And I was too scared of the beady-eyed cashier that was still staring at us to go ask for some sort of sauce. My husband denied my request that he go ask for some because he wants me to, like, be an adult or something. So I sulked and muscled my way through the rest of it, as well as approximately 3 chicken fries that I think were more like cactus fries. All while rationing out the contents of my little water cup and discretely gawking at the Elko people who looked a little too comfortable inside a Burger King. After I gulped down the last bit of desert sandwich, I could tell I had just ingested something that was incapable of moving down my esophagus and I was then both socially and physically uncomfortable. My favorite. It was definitely the highlight of our trip, I’d say. Not really. But this experience taught me a lot of things:

1. Never drive through Nevada.

2. But if you do, don’t stop at the first restaurant you see off the exit. There will be a Wendy’s down the road by where you decide to get gas after eating and you will kick yourself about it for the next five hours until you get to Reno (because everyone knows that Wendy’s is infinitely better than Burger King (unless the Elko Wendy’s is also tainted. Which it probably is)).

3. Just get the sauce.

4. But really. You need the sauce.